I just sent this to the wrong list ... I just started working on the project with Refractions Research. My observation was that so far as I can see org.vfny.geoserver.config.NameSpace.isDefault() is not used in the rest of geoserver. If this is true, I intend to use the org.xml.sax.helpers.NamespaceSupport class instead of the existing NameSpace class.
David